Too Big for Dinner

Here's your nightly math! Just 5 quick minutes of number fun for kids and parents at home. Read a cool fun fact, followed by math riddles at different levels so everyone can jump in. Your kids will love you for it.

Too Big for Dinner

For people who like to eat seafood, lobster is a favorite. These 8-legged, 2-clawed critters usually weigh around a pound and a half; a 2- or 3-pound lobster is a real treat. So you can imagine the shock of this fisherman the other day when he pulled this fellow out of the water! The lobster was about 3 feet long and weighed 20 pounds. Based on its size, scientists think it must have lived at least 25 years — far more than the usual 5 to 7 years for lobsters we eat. The funny thing is, the scientists weren’t that surprised: it turns out lobsters can live as long as 75 or even 100 years, and the biggest one ever weighed 44 1/2 pounds. Luckily for this lobster, the law says you have to throw oversized lobsters back into the ocean. So now it gets to keep eating instead of being eaten.

Little kids: The trap held this huge lobster and 5 others. How many lobsters were in there? Bonus: How many claws did they have all together? (Count 2 per lobster).

Big kids: By how many years is that 25-year-old lobster older than you? (or if you’re older, by how much?) Bonus: If the lobster really was 100 years old, in what year was it born? (We’re in 2015 right now.)

Answers:Wee ones: Different for everyone… if you’re over 3 feet, you’re taller.

Little kids: 6 lobsters. Bonus: 12 claws.

Big kids: Different for everyone… if you’re younger than 25 years, subtract your age from 25, otherwise subtract 25 from your age. Bonus: In 1915, during World War 1.

And thank you Catherine M. for sending this math-y lobster tale!

About the Author

Laura Bilodeau Overdeck is founder and president of Bedtime Math Foundation. Her goal is to make math as playful for kids as it was for her when she was a child. Her mom had Laura baking before she could walk, and her dad had her using power tools at a very unsafe age, measuring lengths, widths and angles in the process. Armed with this early love of numbers, Laura went on to get a BA in astrophysics from Princeton University, and an MBA from the Wharton School of Business; she continues to star-gaze today. Laura’s other interests include her three lively children, chocolate, extreme vehicles, and Lego Mindstorms.